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** v1.3.7 Release - December 23, 2023 **


HO, HO, HO pinball people!

The time has come for us to bounce down the chimney scoop yet again for another Scorbit app release.

The elves have been hard at work as usual at Scorbit HQ, crunching code, crafting and assembling little goodies for the holiday season. This release is primarily a number of fixes to improve the experience, while also throwing in some small but important new features to keep things humming along.

Here's the high level summary:


• Added infinite scrolling, now browse scores and people without "load more" buttons. This way you can just keep scrolling through the history of your friends' scores and challenges all day without a pesky interruption.

• Reworked live game session screens to show mode colors, new animations, and targets as they are hit. The idea here is that modes generally last a longer period than a target, and so a casual observer might miss a target getting hit without it being displayed as it happens. When something lasts longer than a second or two, it slides up into the mode status display, which will change between all current active modes.

• Added manual score override: long press Waiting to Start... now manually submits a score! This is a much-requested feature for those with Scorbitrons that miss sharing a score accidentally and wants to submit the score with a photo. Also if you're experiencing network trouble, it's a good way to ensure your score isn't lost.

• Added multi-player auto claim support for scanning QR codes to claim next available slot. When a game displays (or an operator prints) a QR code, normally in a one player game, the app would claim the slot automatically when the session screen appeared. Now, in multi-player, the app will grab the first empty player slot and assign it to you. You can still manually select slots and a game developer can even specify a player slot in the QR code if they desire.

• Fixed QR code scanning to be more reliable for machines, venues, profiles and pairing - This particular fix will delight people who are pairing lots of machines as we found a number of important bugs to fix in how we process those QR codes once inside the app. See previous posts for the formatting to send a user to a machine, a venue, another user profile, or for pairing a new machine.

• Improved resolution and cropping performance/accuracy for adding photos to scores. We found a number of weird edge cases, particularly with Android, where the aspect ratio and pixel resolution of certain photos added to a score was off, so we overhauled it and fixed it. This is true if you manually submit a score or if you add a victory photo at the end of a game session!

• Added support to tie the whole room together.

• Added support for tablets and larger screen resolutions, as we find an increasing number of iPad and other tablet users wishing to be able to access the various Play screens and the formatting was weird.

• Optimized Play and Profile tabs for faster performance navigating between screens! The venue lists, machine lists, and live sessions would sometimes get confused and have trouble knowing when to re-render, so we overhauled this a bit and it should keep things nice and snappy.

• Reworked all player preferences in Settings to be reliable and fast and fix bugs. If you've ever had issues with setting Auto Claim, Ask to Save, Viewing preferences, or even notifications not "sticking," those have been addressed. You may want to check your Account Menu > Settings to make sure it's in sync with what you want going forward! We still recommend Ask to Save being off and Auto Claim mode being on, which should be forced (they are required to be opposite). If this isn't the case, please reset your settings here to how you expect and it should be good.

• Added support for newer permission requirements and improved permission request flow. With the advent of Android 14, and Android 13, and iOS 17.2, we went back and cleaned up how permissions are getting prompted to make sure everything was up to date and compliant.

• Fixed notification settings not properly activating for various notification types, so hopefully once you validate these settings you should be getting far more notifications you have been missing!

• Fixed Profile tabs and machine search to be faster, more reliable and remember last search state, which is nice if you want to find out what your favorite pinaball player has been scoring on a certain title and want to return to that list at a later time without searching.

• Caught up to all Stern Spike 2 releases as of December 23, 2023.

• Many more fixes under the hood! As always, we try to update antiquated components and back-end elements to keep things running smoothly.


Here's the full changelog:

v1.3.7 - 12/23/23

• Refactored camera interactions and photo processing to fix strange behaviors, poor image quality and incorrect cropping. This should resolve portrait photos appearing with pillboxes and landscape photos with letterboxes, as well as improve the quality of the images.
• Fixed Machine tab leaderboard carousels. There were numerous edge cases of leaderboards not displaying properly in the various views, so we refactored this for greater stability.
• Reworked QR code scanning for app URI support entirely. The QR code format remains the same, but we've fixed the app incorrectly routing some URLs and and not launching the pairing wizard properly.
• Added multi-player support for auto claiming with QR codes: Takes the next available slot, unless the game developer specifies a slot. Useful if you want to keep a QR code on the screen and have player 2, player 3 and player 4 scan in without manually claiming.
• Removed antiquated network calls from game session for performance. This is essentially a greater level of "debouncing" and batching of network calls to reduce overall overhead in the app and the API.
• Repaired pairing logic to fix use of pairing wizard when scanning pairing QR codes: We uncovered a few bugs in the Pairing Wizard process thanks to all the help of the VPIN community and got this working more reliably.
• Fixed auto claim mode icon to properly locate on various screen sizes, so it fits on the top status bar.
• Added platform-compliant launch screens, mostly because tablets want them and they look pretty.
• Fixed Achievement screens to better handle nested lists of achievements, as when you view the lists (such as when you tap "All Achievements") some nested groups of achievements were not formatting properly.
• Rewrote Profile Machine Search screen for better performance and remembering the last state of the screen, so if you search to find someone's scores and leave the screen and return, it will still be where you left it.
• Fixed version check to better handle slow response time from stores, as you can't always depend on the various app stores to keep the latest/greatest version code in the first go.
• Eliminated "no group" crash when selecting certain achievements, which would just unceremoniously crash the app.
• Corrected MANY User Settings bugs in the Settings section to properly represent current user state. The app should no longer "snap back" when you return to the screen to a previous setting. Note that with Auto Claim and Ask To Save, they should always be opposite of each other. If your two switches are in the same position, or look strange, it's because you're settings are out of sync with the setup. In which case, turn off Ask to Save and Auto Claim, wait a moment, and turn back on what you wish to be set, and you should be good for now on.
• Fixed all Viewing Preferences to keep settings saved locally, so we no longer wait for the API to format your venues/home venue.
• Adjusted all tool tip modals to work properly on larger screens, as they were landing all over the place before.
• Optimized venue list screens for faster performance and less memory usage, particularly for large user radiuses.
• Fixed venue list screens to immediately accommodate changes in settings when rendering right after a change.
• Cleaned up behavior of requiring GPS permission to better handle changes in app state, particularly with newer OS versions.
• Adjusted tab bar icons for larger tablets so everything fits where it's supposed to.
• Fixed a number of settings issues related to push notification settings to ensure the system reflects the intention.
• Fixed minor score submission memory leak when saving to leaderboard (prompting on).
• Complete rewrite of mode handling on session screen. Modes now replace "Game On!" on a cycle.
• Targets now appear beneath the modes as they happen.
• Adds manual score override: On a Scorbit-enabled game, if you touch the Waiting to Start... message for a long press period (2-3 seconds), you will now be given the option to manually submit a score. You no longer have to unpair a machine to manually submit.
• Added a number of new manufactures who are integrating direct support into the game.
• Adds color coding support to game mode display on the live session screen, including color support, mode completion codes, and custom session status.
• Updated dozens of libraries to improve compatibility and feature set with the latest and greatest phones and devices.

Happy Holidays!

-The Scorbit Team

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Hey there pinball people! We're excited to share with you Scorbit's v1.3.10 release. Scorbit's team has been hard at work furiously improving performance, streamlining and improving our infrastructure, and of course working on new integrations with a number of new manufacturer partners. Today we're releasing v1.3.10 of the Scorbit app, that includes a fun new feature, the Interactive Score Timeline!

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** Interactive Score Timeline

Many have you have already seen that when you view a verified score that was coming from a Scorbit-connected machine, we provide a timeline of the game in a visual on the score screen. Now we've made it useful! To start, you'll notice we have changed the score screen to now include a thumbnail version of the timeline:

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Every score has this screen on our platform. If the photo attached to the score exists, it will be displayed here. If a game that was manually submitted (no direct Scorbit connection was involved, just a photo), this means it has no game data from a Scorbitron, therefore no timeline will appear. However, if the score was automatically added into the platform, all the way back for years, a thumbnail of the timeline will appear here.

Note that if you choose to share the score with the share button, the thumbnail of the timeline will be included in the shared image:

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Finally, if you tap the timeline thumbnail, it takes you to a new interactive screen:

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As you drag across the timeline, it shows the current timestamp, score, and any modes or targets the player has hit. Curious how an expert player unlocked so many points in a game you watched two years ago? Find the score on any leaderboard in the app and you can review it here.

Note that not all games present mode and target data to Scorbit, so if we didn't have the data back when the score was recorded, it will just be the score information only. Most DMDs and JJP machines can express mode information to Scorbit since 2021, but we're still waiting on a few stragglers to catch up and add it to their output. If a DMD is missing mode information and you want us to add it (for all new scores going forward) let us know!

** Improved Auto-Claim Flow

Are you the kind of player that likes to keep the app open on the pinball glass while you play? We started seeing this at tournaments so competitive players could see their score when the display sometimes was not presenting it. There are also folks who like to see what modes are unlocked without holding the flippers.

As you may remember, the Auto-Claim feature allows you to automate the saving of games as long the setting is active and there is less than 30 seconds betwen games (or custom time set by the machine owner). Just enable the feature in playing preferences, then tap the arrows at the top of the screen to check in to auto-claim, and all your games will be automatically saved.

However, if you have the app open, this presented a problem because when a game ends, it would open the share/challenge invite screen at the end of a game and stay there, waiting for user input:

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Now, if auto-claim is on, after the app reaches this screen, if you hit start on your game, you will automatically return to the live session screen with your player slot claimed. If auto-claim isn't turned on, you will stay right where you are until you cancel, hit New Game, Send Challenge, or swipe to the right.

Regardless of whether or not the app is unlocked, focused or unfocused, if auto-claim is on, in the background, Scorbit will still claim the slot and save the score (you can leave the app in your pocket and play all you want, scores will be saved and achievements unlocked). If it is off, it will stay on this screen until you decide to leave it, giving you time to share or start a challenge.

Also new, if the app is somehow unfocused (say you wish to read a text message or email between games), and then return, if a session is active you will be automatically returned to the game, no navigation required!

** Keep-Awake

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For those who like to keep their phones open while playing, we added a new Playing Preference to keep the phone awake and unlocked while a game session is active. This feature only is active when the app is on the Play tab and a live session is open, including the share/challenge screens. You can find this setting in Account Menu > Settings > Playing Preferences.

** QR Codes

QR codes have been optimized and made snappier. Remember you can use QR codes for games, venues, profiles, even to claim a specific player slot. An owner of a machine can print out a QR code and put it on the apron. A developer of a game can present the QR code visually if you want to claim the slot and navigate to the machine automatically. QR codes can be printed from the My Machines > Machine Settings > Tools menu, from the Scorbit Opcenter website, or you can manually generate QR codes with a URL. The syntax is like this:

Visit a person's profile screen:

https://scorbit.link/invite?$deeplink_path=invite&inviteuserid=4

Navigate to a specific machine's session (or attract mode)

https://scorbit.link/qrcode?$deeplink_path=22334&opdb=G5Dbo-M3dv6

Visit a venue and list the machines within it:

https://scorbit.link/venue?$deeplink_path=venue&venueid=123

You can automatically copy your own profile link in Account Menu > Settings > Contacts if you want to send it to others to invite them to follow you on the platform.

** Auto-fill and auto-correct

By popular demand, we added support for password auto-fill and password managers on the Scorbit login. We also removed auto-correct from the various search inputs, which we agree was annoying.

** General performance improvement and bug fixing

As always, we're always working to improve the speed, performance, and reliability of the app!

Thanks to all you Scorbit players out there! We are looking forward to all the new features an integrations to announce in the future. Meanwhile, keep flipping!

-The Scorbit Team

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** v1.3.10 Changelog

• Adds new Interactive Timeline!
- Tap on a score that was automatically uploaded (not a manual submission)
- Tap on the new Timeline thumbnail.
- Run your finger across the timeline, and it will display what score, modes and targets you hit at that point in the timeline as you drag!
• Adds automatic return to live session when player slot is claimed, session is live and user returns the app to focus after leaving (or exiting and restarting) the app
• Adds automatic return to live session when auto-claim is active and new game is started from share screen
• Adds support for password auto-fill and password managers
• Adds new Playing Preference to keep phone awake/ unlocked during live session, so you can watch while you play if desired
• Clean up of Viewing Preferences, including fix for locking up and not saving setting properly
• General speeding up of QR code scanning, now is snappier and navigates faster
• Adds new iconography for editing items (removes edit pencil)
• Removed incorrect double loading progress icon when listing venues or machines
• Updated WiFi libraries for improved pairing
• Removed auto-correct from search inputs
• Fixes bug that would crash app opening some score detail screens
• Fixes bug that would clip activity monitor and achievement badges over user profile photo
• Fixes a number of timeline rendering bugs for older scores or corrupt data
• Removes incorrect ability to initiate a challenge with a manual score entry (unverified score)
• Fixes keyboard on manual score entry to disappear when you tap outside of it
• Fixes broken profile links in some screens that would crash or deliver a blank screen
• Numerous performance improvements and bug fixes!